The case for dangerous man made global warming hangs on the wall like a frayed medieval tapestry. By pulling just one loose thread the whole thing starts to unravel. We pulled one of those threads recently…

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was recently caught making a mistake in a report on melting ice on Mount Everest. The ABC claimed that “Studies show temperatures are rising faster at Mount Everest than in the rest of South Asia.” When ABC were requested to provide details of the “Studies” they cited Table 10.2 from IPCC’s AR4 Working Group 2 report. However, contrary to ABC’s claims this table showed that the area of fastest rising temperature in South Asia was Sri Lanka, not the Himalaya (and hence not Mt Everest). ABC’s gaffe however served to highlight a few errors made by the IPCC. It turns out the IPCC incorrectly cited references that backed up the Himalayan temperature trends in Table 10.2, citing two conference papers and one peer reviewed paper that related to precipitation, not temperature (also covered in Table 10.2). Additionally references to support the high Sri Lankan temperatures appear to be from conference papers not from peer reviewed journal articles-(Follow references in Table 10.2).

After some digging the original work on the Himalayan temperature trends was found to be:

It’s odd that the IPCC could not find more recent to back up its claims of rapid warming in the Himalaya in AR4. Readers may re-call the IPCC has a tainted record in reporting climate change in the Himalaya having been caught out using “grey literature” to back claims that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. These have now been shown to be false and the IPCC has issued a correction.

IPCC’s trend of 0.09º C.yr-1 for the Himalaya cited in Table 10.2 comes from Table 2 of Shrestha et al., 1999. This presents the regional mean temperature trends for the period 1977-1994 (just 17 years) based on a Kriging analysis. This is a geostatistical method of filling data gaps, great when you are calculating the extent of an ore body with loads of drill hole information but not so good when the data are limited, as is the case here. For the Himalaya, the IPCC also cherry pick the highest seasonal value, the figure for winter (0.09º C.yr-1). The annual figure given by Shrestha et al., 1999 is less: 0.057º C.yr-1.

But that’s not the end of the story; let’s look at the paper by Shrestha et al, 1999 in more detail. It provides an analysis of maximum temperature data from 49 stations in Nepal.

The abstract states:

Analyses of maximum temperature data from 49 stations in Nepal for the period 1971–94 reveal warming trends after 1977 ranging from 0.06 to 0.12C yr-1 in most of the Middle Mountain and Himalayan regions, while the Siwalik and Terai (southern plains) regions show warming trends less than 0.03C yr-1. The subset of records (14 stations) extending back to the early 1960s suggests that the recent warming trends were preceded by similar widespread cooling trends. Distributions of seasonal and annual temperature trends show high rates of warming in the high-elevation regions of the country (Middle Mountains and Himalaya), while low warming or even cooling trends were found in the southern regions. This is attributed to the sensitivity of mountainous regions to climate changes. The seasonal temperature trends and spatial distribution of temperature trends also highlight the influence of monsoon circulation.

The Kathmandu record, the longest in Nepal (1921–94), shows features similar to temperature trends in the Northern Hemisphere, suggesting links between regional trends and global scale phenomena. However, the magnitudes of trends are much enhanced in the Kathmandu as well as in the all-Nepal records. The authors’ analyses suggest that contributions of urbanization and local land use/cover changes to the all-Nepal record are minimal and that the all-Nepal record provides an accurate record of temperature variations across the entire region.

The time covered for the bulk of stations does not cover a single climate cycle so it’s hard to get excited about the results and we assume someone, somewhere will provide an update to extend the analysis to the present. Of the stations selected for the analysis only 5 stations with records dating from or before the mid 1960s were located in the Himalayan Region: Jiri (elevation-2003m), Okhaldunga (elevation-1720m), Chialsa (elevation-2770m), Chainpur (elevation-1329m), and Taplejung (elevation-1732m). Shrestha et al., 1999 define the Himalaya region in their figure 1 reproduced below.

Figure 1 from Shrestha et al., 1999

The location of the stations is shown in the following image from Google Earth, note they are all concentrated in the very eastern part of Nepal (click to enlarge), with none in the western Himalaya, none west of Long 86.23. The vast bulk of the Himalaya is empty of real data.

Location of weather stations in Nepal with records extending back to the early 1960s (based on Shrestha et al., 1999 Table 1). - click to enlarge

The temperature trends (Max/Min) for weather stations with records extending back to the early 1960s are shown in Figure 2 of the paper (reproduced below with a red H next to the 5 Himalayan stations-click to enlarge).

Figure 2 from Shrestha et al., 1999.

We extracted figures for the Himalayan stations and reproduce them in the chart below. It also shows the trend cited by the IPCC of 0.09º C.yr-1 in red.

It’s quite clear the trends of the actual data across the entire record do not support the figures produced in Shrestha’s Kriging analysis, which is limited to 1977-1994. The temperature trends for the Himalayan stations are as follows:

Station

Max ºC.yr-1

Min ºC.yr-1

Jiri

0.063

-0.044

Okhaldunga

0.0016

0.0045

Chialsa

0.039

0.066

Chainpur

0.013

-0.0094

Taplejung

-0.0057

0.0036

Average

0.022

0.0041

These trends, based on the reported station data, are much lower than the trends reported by Shrestha et al., 1999 and do not appear in any way unprecedented or alarming. The absence of data in the Western Himalaya invalidates the Kriging Analysis (you can’t interpolate into a data void), combine this with the crime of cherry picking recent trends to confuse weather with climate and a big part of the IPCC’s fragile tapestry of dangerous man made global warming suddenly falls through your fingers. All thanks to a loose thread revealed by the ABC.

If it’s adjusted, might there be even less warming than indicated here? We have yet to see an aggregate data set where adjustment have done anything other than to warm the present and/or cool off the past. (Though, I suppose there is a first time for anything.)

“The Kathmandu record, the longest in Nepal (1921–94), shows features similar to temperature trends in the Northern Hemisphere, suggesting links between regional trends and global scale phenomena. ”
Yes, climate regions are linked by their adjacent nature.
It’s not like galaxy clusters, with huge voids in between.
Irregardless of whether there are UHI or land-use issues in the path of the chain-reaction or not, each climate region passes on what it didn’t use in weather elements to the next region.
Eventually, they wrap themselves around the globe and ‘return to sending longitude’. The precise path is the devil in the details.

Regarding data this a message I received from Jagadish at Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology.
“You need to purchase digital data. We have temperature data starting from 1950s only. Attached is the list of Station, Price list etc.. ”
Nepal’s temperature data can be obtained via Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology http://www.dhm.gov.np/
You may need to organise a bank transfer though.

Times of India, 11/10/09, Discussed report from the environment ministry by Dr. VK Raina that there were no abnormal patterns in the Himalayas, and “there was only one automated weather station in the entire Himalayas to record climatic data” anyway. The report was said not to be the official position of the Union, but environment minister Ramesh said it did present valid points.The Times contacted Pachauri for comment, and he termed it “magical science.” He later told others it was “voo-doo science.” From the article it seemed no conclusive measurements were available for either side, but certainly not for the side saying they needed reparations for climate crimes.

Again. !! Mere facts. Where are the scary bits. Where is the snap of the Abominable Snow bunny stranded on a bit of glacial remnants. Good grief lads, sauce it up..
Poor old Pach is going to have to write more saucy novels at this rate.
regards

Tenuc says:
August 7, 2010 at 2:36 am
Once again it would seem that the bulk of the warming seems to be happening in place where there are no instruments in place to record it. I wonder why?

Once again it seems important to point out that the satellite data series for global mean temperature (UAH, RSS) are virtually indistinguishable from the terrestrial data series (GISTEMP, HADCRUT etc.). They all show warming of 0.15 – 0.2°C per decade. Argue all you like about the attribution of that warming, but you can be sure that it’s not an artefact of the terrestrial instrumentation.

Australian ABC has always had a firm bias towards the government of the day because it is .inanced by the government. there is no real “free press” in Australia,…… nearly all newspapers are owned by one man LOL

“For the Himalaya, the IPCC also cherry pick the highest seasonal value, the figure for winter (0.09º C.yr-1). The annual figure given by Shrestha et al., 1999 is less: 0.057º C.yr-1.”

That doesn’t look to be the case. It looks like the IPCC 0.09C figure is taken from the average annual for the trans-himalaya, which in the paper’s table 2 is 0.09C/year.

The IPCC afterall said “0.09°C per year in Himalayas and 0.04°C in Terai region, more in winter” which suggests the 0.09C figure is not for winter (otherwise they wouldn’t say “0.09C per year” and “more in winter”). Table 2 lists the trans-himalayan winter trend as 0.12C/year which is more than 0.09C per year. They also mention 0.04C in Terai region, which again matches the annual column from Table 2.

So I think the IPCC are referencing the trans-himalayan figure for the 0.09C. What the IPCC appear to have done is provide the low end and highend annual regional trends from the paper. They also mention the trend is higher in winter. As such I think the IPCC have just forwarded on the information the paper provides.

Just a little digging reveals how rubbish the evidence for AGW actually is, the consensus is advertised and sold as the best possible evidence gathered by the finest scientists from the most reliable sources.
The rush to present a massive quantity of so called evidence meant that corners were cut, research was shoddily put together and grants lavished on unsuitable projects and highly questionable people. The Consensus was in fact designed and built to the standards of a Soviet block housing project and it shows. The problem from the perspective of the consensus builders was that they needed a mass of evidence that merely looked real at first glance but they needed lots of it to portray a real consensus and the problems crept in as they do from day one, no attempt at quality control and a limitless amount of funding in a short time with almost no oversight is a recipe for disaster in the longer term. The consensus is in fact a house of cards built on shifting sands with unsuitable material, the wonder of it is that so few people noticed for so long, however now more and more people are looking closely at the so called mass of evidence and the more they look the more they find.

stephan says:
August 7, 2010 at 3:45 am
Australian ABC has always had a firm bias towards the government of the day because it is .inanced by the government. there is no real “free press” in Australia,…… nearly all newspapers are owned by one man LOL
__________________________________________________________

Not quite right Steven…. The ABC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, is entirely a creature of the Left in Australian politics. It represents and supports the ALP, Australian Labor Party, exclusively and is a mouthpiece for all Socialist and environmental agendas.

There is not one single conservative journalist or interviewer within it’s dictatorial confines…. and now it just went 24/7 in news on the free to air digital channels.

The ABC is funded by the Australian taxpayer, but only represents one side of Politics. The Labor Party’s side. The ABC needs to be disbanded. It is an obscenity in a modern democracy.

They are still at it…..
“‘He warned that record global temperatures, devastating floods in Pakistan and forest fires in Russia were “consistent with the kind of changes we could expect from climate change, and they will get worse if we don’t act quickly”.

Readers may re-call the IPCC has a tainted record in reporting climate change in the Himalaya having been caught out using “grey literature” to back claims that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. These have now been shown to be false and the IPCC has issued a correction.

This is a common misconception. In fact, the IPCC “correction” was carefully worded so as to avoid any admission of error of fact. The only error they admit is one of procedure, by using the gray literature to substantiate a claim, instead of the primary literature. The claim in question is not even stated, but is merely referred to by page and paragraph number in a footnote.

It has, however, recently come to our attention that a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment [footnote 2] refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures,
were not applied properly.

The Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance.

They also make a point of affirming that they stand by their original conclusions despite this lapse in “procedures.”

So the IPCC is trying to make more warming occur then is happening. Sounds familiar? I really wish the IPCC would be focused on finding out what is actually happening in the world and whether or not there is any climate change, instead of cherry-picking data that says places are warming, especially when the data is wrong

Words like “attributed”, “suggest”, And “suggesting” should be forbidden in a scientific paper. This phrase, “contributions of urbanization and local land use/cover changes to the all-Nepal record are minimal”, raises both eyebrows. Take out Chialsa, and I see no rising trend at all!

Stephan and J Hansford both nail it nicely!
As a 20+yr ABC Listener I sure notice the bias there, and in the 2 owner msm.
Science show sat 7th Aug 10, a rambling ditty for the heavily green prowarmist, now it seems to be “win them with wordplay”sceptic bashing by the musical route..superficially humourous, yet with an agenda to ridicule.
Science should get personal for pachy, give him a beanie and a thermometer and set him down on top of one of the glaciers, maybe let rwilliams join him for real life reportage?
cold comfort:-)
I can visualise it, make a good ‘toon

Icarus says:
August 7, 2010 at 3:12 am“Once again it seems important to point out that the satellite data series for global mean temperature (UAH, RSS) are virtually indistinguishable from the terrestrial data series (GISTEMP, HADCRUT etc.). They all show warming of 0.15 – 0.2°C per decade. Argue all you like about the attribution of that warming, but you can be sure that it’s not an artefact of the terrestrial instrumentation.”

There seems to be a widening gap appearing between GISS data and satellite inferred temperature data. The satellite data has problems as the algorithms used to convert brightness data to temperature anomaly tend to produce what the programmers expect to find. Many climate models suffer from this ‘programmer expectation bias’.

Finally it is worth pointing out that Dr. Jones of the CRU confirmed that there had been no statistically significant global warming for the past 15y. He also stated that there had been periods in recorded history when temperature trends had been similar to today, but CO2 was at a much lower level.

Received 25 November 2009
Accepted 20 January 2010
Published 9 April 2010

Abstract. Numerical experiments with the NASA finite-volume general circulation model show that heating of the atmosphere by dust and black carbon can lead to widespread enhanced warming over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and accelerated snow melt in the western TP and Himalayas. During the boreal spring, a thick aerosol layer, composed mainly of dust transported from adjacent deserts and black carbon from local emissions, builds up over the Indo-Gangetic Plain, against the foothills of the Himalaya and the TP. The aerosol layer, which extends from the surface to high elevation ( ~ 5 km), heats the mid-troposphere by absorbing solar radiation. The heating produces an atmospheric dynamical feedback—the so-called elevated-heat-pump (EHP) effect, which increases moisture, cloudiness, and deep convection over northern India, as well as enhancing the rate of snow melt in the Himalayas and TP. The accelerated melting of snow is mostly confined to the western TP, first slowly in early April and then rapidly from early to mid-May. The snow cover remains reduced from mid-May through early June. The accelerated snow melt is accompanied by similar phases of enhanced warming of the atmosphere–land system of the TP, with the atmospheric warming leading the surface warming by several days. Surface energy balance analysis shows that the short-wave and long-wave surface radiative fluxes strongly offset each other, and are largely regulated by the changes in cloudiness and moisture over the TP. The slow melting phase in April is initiated by an effective transfer of sensible heat from a warmer atmosphere to land. The rapid melting phase in May is due to an evaporation–snow–land feedback coupled to an increase in atmospheric moisture over the TP induced by the EHP effect.

Abstract. Global warming or the increase of the surface
and atmospheric temperatures of the Earth, is increasingly
discernible in the polar, sub-polar and major land
glacial areas. The Himalayan and Tibetan Plateau Glaciers,
which are the largest glaciers outside of the Polar Regions,
are showing a large-scale decrease of snow cover
and an extensive glacial retreat. These glaciers such as
Siachen and Gangotri are a major water resource for Asia
as they feed major rivers such as the Indus, Ganga and
Brahmaputra. Due to scarcity of ground measuring stations,
the long-term observations of atmospheric temperatures
acquired from the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU)
since 1979–2008 is highly useful. The lower and middle
tropospheric temperature trend based on 30 years of MSU
data shows warming of the Northern Hemisphere’s midlatitude
regions. The mean month-to-month warming (up
to 0.048±0.026K/year or 1.44K over 30 years) of the mid
troposphere (near surface over the high altitude Himalayas
and Tibetan Plateau) is prominent and statistically significant
at a 95% confidence interval. Though the mean annual
warming trend over the Himalayas (0.016±0.005K/year),
and Tibetan Plateau (0.008±0.006K/year) is positive, the
month to month warming trend is higher (by 2–3 times,
positive and significant) only over a period of six months
(December to May). The factors responsible for the reversal
of this trend from June to November are discussed
here. The inequality in the magnitude of the warming
trends of the troposphere between the western and eastern
Himalayas and the IG (Indo-Gangetic) plains is attributed
to the differences in increased aerosol loading (due to dust
storms) over these regions. The monthly mean lowertropospheric
MSU-derived temperature trend over the IG
plains (dust sink region; up to 0.032±0.027K/year) and
dust source regions (Sahara desert, Middle East, Arabian
region, Afghanistan-Iran-Pakistan and Thar Desert regions;
up to 0.068±0.033K/year) also shows a similar pattern
of month-to-month oscillation and six months of enhanced
and a statistically significant warming trend. The enhanced
warming trend during the winter and pre-monsoon months
(December–May) may accelerate glacial melt. The unequal
distribution of the warming trend over the year is discussed in
this study and is partially attributed to a number of controlling
factors such as sunlight duration, CO2 trends over the
region (2003–2008), water vapor and aerosol distribution.

Abstract. Fundamental to the onset of the Indian Summer Monsoon is the land-sea thermal gradient from the Indian Ocean to the Himalayas-Tibetan Plateau (HTP). The
timing of the onset is strongly controlled by the meridional tropospheric
temperature gradient due to the rapid pre-monsoon heating of the HTP compared
to the relatively cooler Indian Ocean. Analysis of tropospheric temperatures from
the longest available record of microwave satellite measurements reveals
widespread warming over the Himalayan-Gangetic region and consequent
strengthening of the land-sea thermal gradient. This trend is most pronounced in
the pre-monsoon season, resulting in a warming of 2.7ºC in the 29-year record
(1979-2007), when this region is strongly influenced by dust aerosols at elevated
altitudes. The enhanced tropospheric warming is accompanied by increased
atmospheric loading of absorbing aerosols, particularly vertically extended dust
aerosols, raising the possibility that aerosol solar heating has amplified the seasonal
warming and in turn strengthened the land-sea gradient.

This is fascinating stuff Because its unlikely to deviate much any more as it refrezeshttp://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
all bets are off! I wonder what Steve Goddard is thinking now? Would be nice to see a magnified close up soon! (wait another day or two… LOL)

The slope of your comparative red trend line in the final graph is incorrect. Not that this affects your conclusion, but a 35-year period of 0.09dC rising temperature would intersect at 3.15 if starting at zero, not 4.0 as shown.

Remind me, who invented the rule that the IPCC should not use grey literature?

I believe it was the IPCC who claimed (repeatedly) that only peer reviewed literature was used in the assessment reports. They quietly changed their policy several years prior to AR4, but continued to make this claim – as recently as 2009 as I recall.

Remind me, who invented the rule that the IPCC should not use grey literature?

That rule was lifted for AR4, but Patchy didn’t get the memo and continually asserted that the IPCC relied only on peer-reviewed literature, unlike its critics. Some outspoken warmists also found this a convenient stick with which to beat the devil.

Mods: this typo has gone unfixed:

David, UK says:
August 7, 2010 at 1:56 am

Small correction for mods.
“It’s odd that the IPCC could not find more recent” [papers/evidence/?] “to back up its claims” – fill in the gap as appropriate. Cheers.

‘Cherry picked’ has become a hackneyed term in global warming. But in this case it applies.

There was a time of warming in the earth from 1977 to 1999 from PDO (+) and solar activity. The warming had nothing to do with manmade co2. The temperature data used in the study was only from that time. And it shows warming. That would define ‘cherry picking’.

Reports say the Ganga which comes out of the Himalayas from the Gangotri glacier will become a seasonal river flowing only in the monsoons by 2035! While I worry about the far future of what my children will see (cause I don’t plan to have any, anytime soon), the people presently who live by the Ganga depend on it for their livelihood and water source – what will happen to them? What’s happening to them now?

Though they don’t point to which report. They furthermore attribute ‘melting’ to co2 instead of looking at the Asian soot / smog which has been found to have the same or more of a ‘warming’ effect than co2 by the Warmists at Nasa :o)

Melting of major Glaciers in the western Himalayas: evidence of
climatic changes from long term MSU derived tropospheric
temperature trend (1979–2008)….the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU)
since 1979–2008 is highly useful.

Most of the years in your data set are from a time of natural warming in the earth. That is ‘climatic changes’ but it is completely normal. Climate has always changed.

The data set in the study you comment on is not useful in determining long term trend. This using of sort term time periods for determining ‘global warming’ has to stop. 29 years is not useful for determining long term climate.

“”During the last 20 years, the black soot concentration has increased two- to three-fold relative to its concentration in 1975,” said Junji Cao, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and a coauthor of the paper…….”Fifty percent of the glaciers were retreating from 1950 to 1980 in the Tibetan region; that rose to 95 percent in the early 21st century,” said Tandong Yao, director of the Chinese Academy’s Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research. ….At Zuoqiupu glacier — a bellwether site on the southern edge of the plateau and downwind from the Indian subcontinent — black soot deposition increased by 30 percent between 1990 and 2003. The rise in soot levels at Zuoqiupu follows a dip that followed the enacting of clean air regulations in Europe in the 1970s.”
The study was published December 7th in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/nsfc-bcd121409.php

Hu McCulloch says:
August 7, 2010 at 6:18 am
They also make a point of affirming that they stand by their original conclusions despite this lapse in “procedures.”
————-
And despite the error being pointed out to the IPCC by glaciologists with experience of the Himalayas. – “Voodoo science” someone called it. By the way NASA were also caught by a sharp eyed person who found 2035 for complete meltdown which they later removed. :o)

…”29 years is not useful for determining long term climate.
1000′s or 100,000′s of years is what is needed.” But – but we don’t have 1000’s of years. Global warming will not strike us the day after tomorrow, but two days before the day after tomorrow…. which is…. OMG!! run for your lives. Seriously, I will even go with the notion that the earth is warming slowly, but they mustn’t try sell me that they can detect it to tenths and hundredths of a degree – given the shoddy/uncertain state of the data – bollocks.

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
…
The data set in the study you comment on is not useful in determining long term trend. This using of sort term time periods for determining ‘global warming’ has to stop. 29 years is not useful for determining long term climate.

1000′s or 100,000′s of years is what is needed.

That is clearly not true. What would happen to the much-celebrated Mediaeval Warm Period and Little Ice Age if we just drew a straight line trend through the last couple of thousand years of temperature data? What would happen to the last ice age if we used trend lines of hundreds of thousands of years? They would just disappear. That is not ‘determining long term climate’, it’s erasing it. The Earth does have inherent lags due to thermal inertia of the oceans etc., but periods of several decades are long enough to reveal substantial and significant changes in climate, especially in response to the relatively large forcings human activity has been responsible for.

Whether the glaciers are melting or not, whether man had anything to do with it or not, is NOT the ultimate point.

The point is what will happen to LIVING things as a result–especially mammals and man.

We would benefit if there was warming. You find the most life in the tropics. You find a higher winter-death in people than summer death (and the alarmists would increase summer deaths by depriving us of air conditioning) when deaths-by-month are graphed.

I want to see more research into the health effects of small increases of carbon dioxide, but all I can find are less than a dozen studies–suggesting that even enormous increases of 50X CO (2) would be beneficial.

Stephen said: “This is fascinating stuff Because its unlikely to deviate much any more as it refrezeshttp://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
all bets are off! I wonder what Steve Goddard is thinking now? Would be nice to see a magnified close up soon! (wait another day or two… LOL)”

The graph looks like a sine wave to me, proving whether its regional or planet wide weather and climate operate in cycles. Like seasons – hot at the top, cold at the bottom then back to warm again. Or when my ex-wife asks for money – happy at he top if I have it, angry at the bottom when I don’t. lol

I think the planet is self-regulatory whether man is here or not. Four and a half billion years kinda proves that.

tty says:
August 7, 2010 at 12:52 pm
“No, but you can extrapolate into a data void.”

Kriging is a technique for interpolation, not extrapolation.

Kriging lets you interpolate or extrapolate, though of course the precision of an interpolation will be a lot higher than that of an extrapolation.

The valley of Nepal is a lot closer to the Himalayas than is say New Mexico, so I don’t see it as particularly egregious to use Nepal temperatures as indicators of Himalayan temperatures, in the absence of anything better.

Reports say the Ganga which comes out of the Himalayas from the Gangotri glacier will become a seasonal river flowing only in the monsoons by 2035! While I worry about the far future of what my children will see (cause I don’t plan to have any, anytime soon), the people presently who live by the Ganga depend on it for their livelihood and water source – what will happen to them? What’s happening to them now?

But it is precisely the IPCC-endorsed disappearance of Gangotri and all other Himalayan glaciers by 2035 that implies that after that date there will only be monsoon runoff.

Although the IPCC has admitted a procedural error in making this claim without a reference to the peer-reviewed literature, it has not admitted that the claim itself is wrong, and in fact has emphasized that it stands by its alarmist projections.

“…especially in response to the relatively large forcings human activity has been responsible for.”

Since you claim it is clear then you must have clear evidence. But no one has evidence it is caused by man. There is only evidence it is caused by Nature and by the sun.

I’ll have a stab at it then:

Human activity has increased atmospheric CO2 by ~100ppm since pre-industrial times. We know this from straightforward calculations of historic fossil fuel use (how much coal, oil etc. we’ve burned) and from isotopic analysis of the atmospheric CO2 (fossil fuels have been in the ground for millions of years and therefore have a characteristic and detectable isotopic signature).

This additional ~100ppm of CO2, together with other human influences (both warming and cooling), amounts to a net anthropogenic forcing of ~1.6W/m² since the pre-industrial – IPCC figure from AR4.

Fast feedback climate sensitivity is around 0.75°C/W/m² – i.e. over a few decades, each additional W/m² of climate forcing will lead to around 0.75°C of global warming. Hence the current anthropogenic forcing should result in around 1.6 * 0.75 = 1.2°C of short-term warming.

The increased atmospheric CO2 from human activity should result in a top-of-atmosphere radiative imbalance (i.e. an enhanced greenhouse effect). This has been detected both by satellite measurements of reduced longwave radiation to space (Harries 2001) and by ground-based detection of increased downward longwave radiation (Wang 2009). Hence the Earth is warming up, as expected.

This enhanced anthropogenic greenhouse effect has so far produced around 0.7°C of global warming with a further 0.5°C in the pipeline (it takes decades for the climate system – primarily the oceans – to warm up enough for outgoing longwave radiation to increase and once again balance incoming solar radiation).

So, anthropogenic global warming is predicted by the straightforward physics of greenhouse gases and confirmed by experimental evidence from satellites and ground-based observations.

The evidence is very strong for the magnitude of changes in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and also very strong for the forcing which would result from such changes – it’s simply not credible that we could increase atmospheric CO2 without causing the forcing associated with that increase, as this is just basic physics.

Anyone suggesting that the warming of recent decades was due to some natural phenomenon (e.g. the sun) would have to also explain what happened to the anthropogenic radiative forcing which we know must exist. They would have to show that it was counteracted by yet another natural phenomenon which somehow masked its effects – i.e. a putative positive natural forcing entirely counteracted by a putative negative natural forcing, leaving just the anthropogenic forcing to cause the currently observed global warming… but of course that would be the same as agreeing that the anthropogenic forcing is causing the warming anyway. Otherwise, you have to resort to denying the basic physics of greenhouse gases, which is a nonsense since it can be proven in simple laboratory experiments.

Onion (August 7, 2010 at 4:17 am)
Of the 49 stations used. 6 are from the Himalaya. The remaining station is “Jumla” located 29.28, 82.17. Shrestha eta 199 provide no further information on this station.

Onion August 7, 2010 at 4:42 am
“So I think the IPCC are referencing the trans-Himalayan figure for the 0.09C” then why not state trans-Himalaya rather than “Himalaya” as indicated. As Shrestha et al., 1999 show in their figure 1 these are quite separate regions.

Hu McCulloch August 7, 2010 at 6:18 am
Thanks for the comment on IPCC admission of their “procedural error”. One of the features of bureaucracy is an inability to admit mistakes.

richard telford and Dusty
”The trend line on the last graph on this page purports to have a gradient of 0.09C. It doesn’t. The line has a gradient about 25% higher. (0.09C/yr would give 3.15C after 35 years, not 4C)”
Thanks for pointing this out. I will provide a corrected version to Anthony.

Earth’s climate has been changing for millions of years and continues to do so. Here on the East coast we have been sweltering with 90 deg days for many weeks, while the West coast is shivering — even a heating contractor is having a far busier summer than normal. Is it due to an extremely fast transition from El Nino to La Nina? Global cooling concerns, anyone in far-out SF?

Here’s the whole story copied from today’s Wall Street Journal:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
SAN FRANCISCO—While much of the U.S. is sweltering, the West Coast is experiencing one of its coolest summers in decades, putting a damper on everything from air-conditioning services to attendance at water parks.

The cool-down has stretched from Southern California to Alaska. The high temperature in Anchorage has reached just 73 degrees so far this summer, compared with 81 degrees last year. Portland, Ore., has seen only four days of 90 degrees or higher temperatures, compared with its usual seven or eight days at those levels by now, National Weather Service officials say.

Famously cool San Francisco had its coldest July since 1971, with high temperatures hovering around 63.2 degrees, 3.3 degrees below average, according to the National Weather Service. At Los Angeles International Airport, July’s average high was 70.5 degrees, 4.8 degrees below historic norms. With ocean temperatures as much as 10 degrees cooler than normal, Southern California’s famous beaches have been less crowded.

Southern California often experiences “June gloom,” a period of cool, damp weather in late spring and early summer. But this year, “the June gloom has been going on all summer,” said Leith Emery, owner of PV Surf Camp in Palos Verdes Estates. Mr. Emery said he has canceled four weeks of afternoon sessions so far this summer after three-quarters of his students dropped out.

In San Jose, Calif., where the average high temperature of 78.8 degrees in July was the coolest in 52 years, calls to service air-conditioning equipment have dropped 50% so far this summer for Valley Heating, Cooling & Electrical, owner Cindy Faulkner said.

“Normally on a good day, we get at least 30 to 50 calls in summer, but today so far we’ve taken four,” Ms. Faulkner said recently. Valley recently reduced its head count by three employees. “It’s definitely a struggle,” Ms. Faulkner said.

Attendance has been flat at three Raging Waters parks in California, despite new attractions and an improving economy, according to James Judy, vice president of operations for Palace Entertainment, a unit of Britain’s Candover Investments PLC that runs the water parks. Palace’s nine East Coast water parks were reporting stronger attendance this summer, he said.

“It’s definitely not the summer we were hoping for in California,” Mr. Judy said.

Meteorologists attribute the low temperatures partly to a trough of low pressure parking cooler air along much of the West Coast for months. That has created a thicker-than-normal marine layer, an air mass that develops over a body of water amid a temperature inversion, with stronger winds to bring the frigid air onshore, said Warren Blier, a weather-service science officer in Monterey, Calif.

Mr. Blier said the mirror image of that weather pattern is a high-pressure trough that has parked warm air over the East Coast.

“We don’t have a good understanding of why the trough is persisting here,” Mr. Blier said. “It probably has something to do with global distribution of sea-surface temperatures.”

One theory is that there has been an unusually fast transition from an El Niño condition, which features warmer waters in the equatorial Pacific, to a La Niña condition, with cooler waters. Meteorologists have credited El Niño for bringing a wet year to California after three years of drought. La Niña typically ushers in drier weather for California, but forecasting models so far are unclear what this winter will bring.

There are some pluses to being unseasonably cool. Alfresco Heating in Novato, Calif., is going out on four to five calls a day to install or service heating equipment, compared with the two to three calls it normally handles in July, said service manager Deanna Hoppin.

“This is normally one of the slowest times of the year, but now it has become one of the busiest,” Ms. Hoppin said.

Fast feedback climate sensitivity is around 0.75°C/W/m² – i.e. over a few decades, each additional W/m² of climate forcing will lead to around 0.75°C of global warming. Hence the current anthropogenic forcing should result in around 1.6 * 0.75 = 1.2°C of short-term warming.</i.

I'm not sure what you're driving at here. When co2 increases in the atmosphere the additional energy flux downward from it causes negative feedback from H2O resulting in cooling in the earth.

This is not proof. It is conflation. The price of chocolate has also gone up in that time. Chocolate causes global warming.

I explained how we know that the extra 100ppm of CO2 is due to human activity. What do you think happens to the carbon in fossil fuels when they’re burnt? It combines with oxygen from the atmosphere to produce CO2. That’s what burning means. Where do you think that CO2 ends up? In the atmosphere, obviously. How do we know it’s still there (or at least part of it is)? Because of the changed isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2.

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 7, 2010 at 4:01 pm
and by ground-based detection of increased downward longwave radiation (Wang 2009). Hence the Earth is warming up, as expected.

The earth is not warming. Please do not make things up. The earth has been cooling since 1998 while manmade co2 continues to rise.

Why do you repeat things which you know are false? The Earth’s climate system is warming at about 0.18°C per decade, with no sign of that even slowing down, let alone stopping. The proof is undeniable.

The chart showing Himalayan trends and IPCC’s trend from WGII Table 10.2 has now been corrected. This now shows the approximate IPCC trend – over 35 years (not 45) as previous shown.
Thanks Anthony for updating, and thanks to the keen eyes that picked up the error.
Perhaps the IPCC can send draft versions of its next assessment report to WUWT for review!

George Grisancich, regarding the very high Sri Lankan temps of 2 degrees per year; the references cited by the IPCC in Table 10.2 are as follows:

Chandrapala, L., 1996: Long term trends of rainfall and temperature in Sri Lanka. Climate Variability and Agriculture, Y.P. Abrol, S. Gadgil and G.B. Pant, Eds., Narosa Publishing House, New Delhi, 153-162.
Chandrapala, L. and T.K. Fernando, 1995: Climate variability in Sri Lanka – a study of air temperature, rainfall and thunder activity. Proc. International Symposium on Climate and Life in the Asia-Pacific, University of Brunei, Darussalam.

I’m pretty sure it’s just one more IPCC error that slipped through. The 2.0 deg statement is not in the First Order Draft (FOD), and is first mentioned by Basnayake in FOD Expert Review Comments, and is accepted by the lead authors. During the second and final round of review, the error is noted by Xiuqi Fang, of Beijing Normal University. He states, “table 10.2. Check the temperature increasing rate in Sri Lanka. 2C increase per year is too high”, to which the lead authors respond, “Table entries corrected”.

The ABC is funded by the Australian taxpayer, but only represents one side of Politics. The Labor Party’s side. The ABC needs to be disbanded. It is an obscenity in a modern democracy.
***
Absolute rubbish.

If only glaciers could read, 90% are retreating. Like sitting in a car with a stuck acellerator and failing brakes, discussing the probable and not so probable reasons for the failure of both. In the meantime, the cliff keeps getting closer. The cliff is, in thjis case, is 2 billion people relying on summer glacier melt to feed the rivers. Weather that happens in 10-30-50 or 100 years is a moot point. Even half melted, the problems will be obvious. Call me alarmist if you feel the need.

Q: Has Global Warming finally arrived?
Richard Somerville (climate scientist) says “It has arrived…we’ve been predicting them [extreme weather patterns] for years and they are here”.

Deke Arndt from National Climate Data Center discusses the temperature trends (1880 to the present).
***
Bias? Since when is reporting what is happening bias? Okay, I get it, we’re getting more heatwaves and higher temperatures, but we musn’t link it to global warming. The world is cooling? Now isn’t that biassed?

Seriously, the question is: What is the average temperature 5,000 meters above sea level?
Then, how do you explain supposed “melting down”?
***
Seriously, have you ever seen a glacier? They don’t precariously balance on top of mountains, send me a picture of one that does. Glaciers form in mountain valleys at differen altitudes. With global warming the frost line retreats and the lowest altitude glaciers will melt first. Over the longer term, glaciers need to have a balance between melt and growth. In the short term that may mean moving between retreat and gain. The difference today is that 90% or more are retreating and continue to retreat. That puts it on a global scale. Glaciers are the single most important source of fresh water for humanity, we can’t fool around with it. How fast are they melting? That’s a consideration for future generations; that they are melting is beyond dispute.

Seriously, the question is: What is the average temperature 5,000 meters above sea level?
Then, how do you explain supposed “melting down”?
***
Seriously, have you ever seen a glacier? They don’t precariously balance on top of mountains, send me a picture of one that does. Glaciers form in mountain valleys at differen altitudes. With global warming the frost line retreats and the lowest altitude glaciers will melt first. Over the longer term, glaciers need to have a balance between melt and growth. In the short term that may mean moving between retreat and gain. The difference today is that 90% or more are retreating and continue to retreat. That puts it on a global scale. Glaciers are the single most important source of fresh water for humanity, we can’t fool around with it. How fast are they melting? That’s a consideration for future generations; that they are melting is beyond dispute.

Oops, clarification to my post at 9:32 — those annual rates are for the period of 1961-1990.

And additional information about the Sri Lankan rates, from “Impacts of climate change on water resources and agriculture in Sri Lanka: a review and preliminary vulnerability mapping” by Nishadi Eriyagama, Vladimir Smakhtin, Lalith Chandrapala, and Karin Fernando. ( http://books.google.com/books?id=zzHuyEW2nDQC ) “The rate of increase in temperature from 1961 to 1990 is 0.016 C per year…Sri Lanka’s 100-year warming tread from 1896 to 1996 is 0.003 C per year…while it is 0.025 C per year for the 10-year period 1987-1996.”

“The difference today is that 90% or more [glaciers] are retreating and continue to retreat. That puts it on a global scale. Glaciers are the single most important source of fresh water for humanity, we can’t fool around with it. How fast are they melting? That’s a consideration for future generations; that they are melting is beyond dispute.”

Where do you find this rubbish? 90% of which glaciers are melting? We don’t know how many glaciers there are, let alone how many may or may not be melting.

Seriously. Nobody has the slightest idea how many glaciers exist, let alone how many are shrinking. I’m sure it would take many hundreds, if not thousands of glaciologists to just study the glaciers in Alaska.

The same argument applies to species loss. We have no idea how many species exist, and therefore no idea how many species we may be losing. Both glaciers and species could be increasing rapidly and we would have no idea.

I really stuffed up the links in my earlier post on chapter 10, so it’s a bit hard to follow the logic.

Timeline:Fist Order Draft, 10.2.2 Observed climate trends and variability, Table 10.2 does not have a “change in temperature” entry for Sri Lanka, but does have entries for “Change in Precipitation”, and “References”. Which contain, “Increase trend in February and decrease trend in June” and “Chandrapala and Fernando, 1995; Chandrapala, 1996” respectfully. Clearly, the two references relate to changes in precipitation, not temperature.

“”Table 10.2” under Sri Lanka -change in temperature “minimum and maximum temperatures have been increasing during tthe last centurary. 0.016 C increase per year during 1961-90 period over the entire country. 2.0 C increase per century over the central highlands.” under the references “Basnayake, B.R.S.B. et al 2002″”

I wonder how many of the above “ex- spurts” have any first hand experience living with glaciers. They are rivers of compacted snow. Snow that has accumulated to a great enough depth to flow down hill to an area where they melt. The glaciers of the Alaskian interiour accumulate snow in areas that are warmer then the dry areas where they terminate as great blue saphires in the gray and brown foot hills. Warm winters of heavy snows cause them to advance and cold dry winters cause them to retreat. For those that have not lived in real snow country, snow falls are the heaviest when the temperature is near freezing and gets lighter as it gets colder. In a town that I lived in, in Alaska, on the coast, the temperature rarely got below freezing while the winter snow fall total might average 100 feet and there would be an accumulation of 20 feet of hard packed ice /snow by spring.Glaciers from this area would flow to the interiour to melt where the temperature would drop to -40F or colder for much of the winter. In the very cold interiour only 20 miles away the winter snow fall accumulation might be only 3 feet of dry snow. In the mountains of California, where I have lived most of my life, the snow fall amounts determine the extents of the permanent ice fields and glaciers and not the local temperature changes. Melt at the terminis is not important, snow in the high country is. The flow rate is set by the snow accumulation in the ice fields of the head of the glacier. Less snow, slower flow. The terminis is in an excess melt area, where the melt is fed by the ice flowing out of the ice fields. Less snow, slower flow, the glacier retreats. More snow, greater flow, the glacier advances.

toby: August 7, 2010 at 11:08 am
It is hard to argue with the video evidence
REPLY: Yes but video is not science. Would prefer a video report from an NGO (the Asia society) then? -A

I’ll see your video evidence and raise with video evidence:
***
And then it came to be that I saw both videos and enlightenment came.
Videos themselves may not be science but what it shows may be, alas, apologies for this basic primary school educational line.
One video shows dramatic glacier retreat as actually observed. The other comes from Doug H Hoffman “The Resilient Earth”, sceptics site, which talks about two glaciers, The Sishian in Kashmere and the Gagotri glacier feeding the Ganges. Behold, it even says that the Gagotri glacier retreated between 1934 and 2003 by 22m per year. Slowed to 12m per year 2004/5 and is now at “standstill” (not my inverted commas)
Another report says that the Gagotri retreated @ 21m/yr between 1931-175 and since doubled the speed of retreat.
The himalayas has 7000 glaciers and most cannot be reached, accessible ones are monitored. It doesn’t make sense to claim that because few (15) glaciers are physically monitored out of 7000, to make an assumption that the others are behaving different or opposite. The sites monitored are not “cherrie picked”, they are reacheable and observeable, and isn’t that the best scientific evidence? But don’t video it, because then it is not science. There are some 160,000 glaciers in polar regions globally; must they all be monitored on-site to prove what’s happening? The water running off doesn’t count because it is not ice anymore? Lets stay real please.
This thread is about glaciers melting (or not). Many of the comments have strayed well away from it into “data” grandstanding. Obfuscation at its best.

New Delhi – 11 Feb 07 – Some glacial experts have questioned the alarmists theory on global warming leading to shrinkage of Himalayan glaciers. VK Raina, a leading glaciologist and former ADG of GSI is one among them.

He feels that the research on Indian glaciers is negligible. Nothing but the remote sensing data forms the basis of these alarmists observations and not on-the-spot research.

Raina told the Hindustan Times that out of 9,575 glaciers in India, research has been conducted only on about 50. Nearly 200 years data has shown that nothing abnormal has occurred in any of these glaciers.

The issue of glacial retreat is being sensationalised by a few individuals, the septuagenarian Raina claimed.

However, Dr RK Pachouri, Chairman, Inter-Governmental Panel of Climatic Change said it’s recently released fourth assessment report has recorded increased glacier retreat since the 1980s.

But Raina, who has been associated with the research and data collection in over 25 glaciers in India and abroad, debunked the theory that Gangotri glacier is retreating alarmingly.

Maintaining that the glaciers are undergoing natural changes witnessed periodically, he said recent studies in the Gangotri and Zanskar areas (Drung- Drung, Kagriz glaciers) have not shown any evidence of major retreat.

“Claims of global warming causing glacial melt in the Himalayas are based on wrong assumptions,” said Raina, a trained mountaineer and skiing expert.

There are only about a dozen scientists working on glaciers in India under the aegis of the Geological Society of India. How can one talk about the state of glaciers when not much research is being done on the ground, he wondered.

In fact, it is difficult to ascertain the exact state of Himalayan glaciers as these are very dusty as compared to the ones in Alaska and the Alps. The present presumptions are based on the cosmatic study of the glacier surfaces.

Nobody knows what is happening. Whatever is being flaunted about the under surface activity of the glaciers is merely presumptions, he claimed.

His views were echoed by Dr RK Ganjoo, Director, Regional Centre for Field Operations and Research on Himalayan Glaciology, who is supervising study of glaciers in Ladakh region including one in the Siachen area. He also maintained that nothing abnormal has been found in any of the Himalyan glaciers studied so far by him.

Another leading geologist MN Koul of Jammu University, who is actively engaged in studying glacier dynamics in J&K and Himachal holds similar views. Referring to his research on Kol glacier ( Paddar, J&K) and Naradu (HP), he said both the glaciers have not changed much in the past two decades.

BTW. The only think you can assume about the glaciers you do not check is that nothing is happening to them. Your suggestion that 15 glaciers (0.21%) are indicative of the other 6,985 is just plain silly.

“The difference today is that 90% or more [glaciers] are retreating and continue to retreat. That puts it on a global scale. Glaciers are the single most important source of fresh water for humanity, we can’t fool around with it. How fast are they melting? That’s a consideration for future generations; that they are melting is beyond dispute.”

Where do you find this rubbish? 90% of which glaciers are melting? We don’t know how many glaciers there are, let alone how many may or may not be melting.

According to the USGS (United States Geological Survey) in Alaska alone, there are 616 named glaciers out of an estimated 100,000 glaciers.

Seriously. Nobody has the slightest idea how many glaciers exist, let alone how many are shrinking. I’m sure it would take many hundreds, if not thousands of glaciologists to just study the glaciers in Alaska.

The same argument applies to species loss. We have no idea how many species exist, and therefore no idea how many species we may be losing. Both glaciers and species could be increasing rapidly and we would have no idea.

***
I’m talking about monitored glaciers and in the case of the himalayas, the behaviour of the monitored ones will reflect the behaviour over the entire 500,000 KM2 of the total area. To pre-empt misconception, I cite the total Himalayan area in which the glaciers exist not implying as some did on this blog site with “glaciergate”, that it (the 500,000 km2) was the surface area of all glaciers.
***
“Seriously. Nobody has the slightest idea how many glaciers exist, …”
***
By “slightest idea” do you mean that there maybe 500,000, a million or 1700? Don’t demean the people working in the field of glaciers with a childish comment.
The total tally at present, of named and unnamed glaciers, is about 160,000 and the number depends entirely on cut off based on size, e.i. too small to count.
Do you really believe that unless we air drop thousands of people on inaccessible glaciers for measuring purposes, we can’t find out if other glaciers are melting besides the ones monitored? May the last surviving glacier tell the story.
How many observers would you, for instance place around Antarctica to measure the sea ice extent shrinking? Would it be 50, 500, 5000, before you would admit that in between there is no doubt similar shrinking? To pre-empt, yes satelites do that better, but that was not the point of the analogy. You know, don’t you?
If in say a 10 Km radius around you the temperature is about 30C, would you feel safe to assume that within the whole area the temperature will be similar? Or would you say sorry, we can’t be sure because there’s no thermometer there. I’m sure that there won’t be skating on natural ice in the middle. Just for clarification, no there’s no mountain there either, or a deep hole filled with Smokey’s “Klimate Kool Aid”. Apologies for driving the point home. Well….kind of. Enjoying an excellent Shiraz right now.

I don’t have access to the rules for AR1 or AR2, but since both reports cite non-peer reviewed literature, it is implausible that their use was forbidden.
The allegation that there is, or has been, a ban on IPCC using grey literature is a [SNIP]

Icarus says:
August 7, 2010 at 10:40 am
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
…
The data set in the study you comment on is not useful in determining long term trend. This using of sort term time periods for determining ‘global warming’ has to stop. 29 years is not useful for determining long term climate.

1000′s or 100,000′s of years is what is needed.

That is clearly not true. What would happen to the much-celebrated Mediaeval Warm Period and Little Ice Age if we just drew a straight line trend through the last couple of thousand years of temperature data? What would happen to the last ice age if we used trend lines of hundreds of thousands of years? They would just disappear. That is not ‘determining long term climate’, it’s erasing it. The Earth does have inherent lags due to thermal inertia of the oceans etc., but periods of several decades are long enough to reveal substantial and significant changes in climate, especially in response to the relatively large forcings human activity has been responsible for.

I hope you realize it, but perhaps you do not: Your statement is self-contradictory.

If you would ‘zero-out’ all past climate changes, then you can’t use ANY past climate –or weather– events in reference to current events.

Rather, all you might do is talk about the current matters in what amounts to a vacuum.

Glaciers are the single most important source of fresh water for humanity, we can’t fool around with it. How fast are they melting? That’s a consideration for future generations; that they are melting is beyond dispute.

Let’s assume all you say is true.

Simple solution: build nukes to desalinate ocean water.

Funding? Cut studies on climate change and use money to build nukes. Also, stop spending money on weapons systems and use money to build nukes. India should do both.

Of course you need a growing economy to embark on any sort of major project. This is why India is rejecting any agreements on CO2 cuts; they need the cheap energy to grow their economy. Same for China.

Which is why CO2 growth in the atmosphere will not stop, no matter what the US does. It doesn’t look as if the US will embrace any sort of carbon tax (by whatever name you give it), but stranger things have been known to happen.

In any event, the experiment continues. We will know, certainly within 30 years, if CO2 is somehow connected to global warming. I don’t see the evidence for it now.

Glaciers are the latest desperate hot button of the climate alarmist contingent.

The arm-waving over glaciers was instigated by a completely baseless prediction of glacier disappearance by people who should know better, but who go with the bogus numbers because it provides confirmation of their bias; cognitive dissonance at work.

They need to take a step back for once, and accept the fact that a 0.6° temperature rise over the past century [since partially retraced] is not going to vaporize the world’s glaciers.

The natural cycles at work are the result of the planet’s emergence from the Little Ice Age. Attributing those natural cycles to a tiny trace gas is the staple of the alarmist crowd. But like the rest of their scare tactics, it doesn’t pass the smell test.

I know this isn’t definitive proof of what the IPCC rules are regarding grey literature, but have a listen (if you can stomach it) to Pachauri rattling on.

Here are a few quotes from Pachauri’s mouth:
“This is not something the authors have made up. This is based on peer reviewed literature. That’s the manner in which the IPCC functions”
“We don’t pick up a newspaper article, and based on that come up with our findings”
“This is based on very rigorous research that had stood the test of scrutiny through peer reviews”

Icarus says:
August 7, 2010 at 2:36 pmHuman activity has increased atmospheric CO2 by ~100ppm since pre-industrial times. We know this from straightforward calculations of historic fossil fuel use (how much coal, oil etc. we’ve burned) and from isotopic analysis of the atmospheric CO2 (fossil fuels have been in the ground for millions of years and therefore have a characteristic and detectable isotopic signature).

Questions for you:

[1] CO2 levels have been far higher in the past, but the temperature didn’t rise. What’s your reason for that?

[2] The temperature has been higher in the past, but the CO2 levels were low. What’s your reason for that?

[3] In the Vostok Ice Cores, temperature –in every case– PRECEDED any rise or fall in CO2. By the evidence then, CO2 is NOT a causative agent, but rather an indicator gas. How do you explain the lagging effect?

[4] Precisely what is a ‘fossil fuel,’ according to yourself?

[5] Since you are wont to declare that the carbon atoms of mineral crude happen to be of a different isotope, are you able to present information which incontrovertibly proves that assertion?

[6] What happens when those different isotopes are absorbed by whatever other natural process? Do they change, or do they remain the same?

This is not proof. It is conflation. The price of chocolate has also gone up in that time. Chocolate causes global warming.

I explained how we know that the extra 100ppm of CO2 is due to human activity. What do you think happens to the carbon in fossil fuels when they’re burnt? It combines with oxygen from the atmosphere to produce CO2. That’s what burning means. Where do you think that CO2 ends up? In the atmosphere, obviously. How do we know it’s still there (or at least part of it is)? Because of the changed isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2.

The earth is not warming. Please do not make things up. The earth has been cooling since 1998 while manmade co2 continues to rise.

Why do you repeat things which you know are false? The Earth’s climate system is warming at about 0.18°C per decade, with no sign of that even slowing down, let alone stopping. The proof is undeniable.

No sign of slowing? Interesting remark.

People are quite literally FREEZING to death in South America –near the equator– and you’re talking about warming?

Marc Hendrickx says:
August 7, 2010 at 5:48 pmGeorge Grisancich, regarding the very high Sri Lankan temps of 2 degrees per year; the references cited by the IPCC in Table 10.2 are as follows:

Chandrapala, L., 1996: Long term trends of rainfall and temperature in Sri Lanka. Climate Variability and Agriculture, Y.P. Abrol, S. Gadgil and G.B. Pant, Eds., Narosa Publishing House, New Delhi, 153-162.
Chandrapala, L. and T.K. Fernando, 1995: Climate variability in Sri Lanka – a study of air temperature, rainfall and thunder activity. Proc. International Symposium on Climate and Life in the Asia-Pacific, University of Brunei, Darussalam.

Can anyone find a copy of either?

Mark,

You speak of a quandary: All of these/those ‘white papers’ published by the various government organs, reference papers which seemingly can never be obtained by the average citizen –or anyone else– without paying an arm and a leg in the process.

So, we’re summarily expected to believe all of the prognostications put forth by whatever government entity, and hope they get it right.

From where I see things, if ANY agency of whatever government, references whatever paper for the purposes of MAKING A POLITICAL DECISION, then THAT PAPER becomes public property, and is allowed to be read/reviewed/downloaded by everyone requesting it, without charge to the requester, and ALL reference material automatically becomes public property –IF the decision becomes law.

… periods of several decades are long enough to reveal substantial and significant changes in climate, especially in response to the relatively large forcings human activity has been responsible for.

Not if those decades coincide with the warm phases of important (Atlantic, Pacific, …) oceanic oscillations.

Fuzzylogic19 says:
August 7, 2010 at 7:28 pm

If only glaciers could read, 90% are retreating. … the cliff keeps getting closer. The cliff is, in this case, is 2 billion people relying on summer glacier melt to feed the rivers. … Even half melted, the problems will be obvious.

From what I recall of prior threads on this matter:

1. The Himalayan glaciers (which are the ones that large numbers of people rely on for meltwater) can’t melt back much further, because most of them are so high that the temperature hardly ever gets above freezing. They aren’t analogous to glaciers elsewhere.

2. Even if they did vanish, river flow would not be much affected, because rivers are fed by an annual snow-melt that is stretched out over most of the year. It is summer snow-melt, not glacier melt, that “2 billion people” (including me) rely on for water, not glacier-melt.

3. Himalayan glaciers (like many other glaciers alarmists cite) have been retreating since long before 1950, which tends to largely exculpate manmade CO2.

Fuzzylogic19: August 7, 2010 at 7:28 pmThe cliff is, in thjis case, is 2 billion people relying on summer glacier melt to feed the rivers. Weather that happens in 10-30-50 or 100 years is a moot point. Even half melted, the problems will be obvious. Call me alarmist if you feel the need.

Wrong. They depend, first, on spring and summer meltwater from the *snowfall* on the mountain slopes, second, on the seasonal monsoons, and only finally on glacier melt. And the problem isn’t that the glaciers are melting, it’s that annual snowfall has been reduced — the glaciers are ablating, even in the wintertime. The snowfall has been reduced because the forested area at the base of the mountains has been reduced by logging, fuel gathering, and land-clearing for agriculture.

Trees exhale water vapor, among other things, and if they’re around the base of a mountain range, the vapor is carried upslope until it condenses and falls as snow (it’s *cold* up there). Wet snow falls in the lower elevations, but the lighter powder is carried higher — if there’s less overall evaporation, there’s less overall snowfall, and the decrease is most-noticeable at higher elevations. The high glaciers in the Himalayas can only keep their mass by receiving regular snowfall — which at that altitude, is light powder — and it takes a lot of powder to compact into just an inch of ice.

Thanks for the verification that the “2 C/yr” for the temperature trend in Sri Lanka’s highlands, was a simple typo for “2 C/century.”

For some reason, when attempting to download Ch 10’s FOD comments last night, my computer stopped about 80% of the way through. Several times, in both IE and Firefox. So then I had to resort to find inferior references.

[And then naturally, your link to the FOD comments worked perfectly this morning…]

So in summary after a lazy media organisation cite IPCC as a source we find:
1. Table 10.2 indicates that warming in the Himalaya is 0.09º C.yr-1 and the trend for Si Lanka is 2°C increase “per year” in central highlands.
2. IPCC provide the incorrect reference to back their temperature figure for the Himalayas. They cite two conference papers and one peer reviewed paper that relate to precipitation, not temperature. The correct reference is found to be: Shrestha, Arun B.; Wake, Cameron P.; Mayewski, Paul A.; Dibb, Jack E., 1999. Maximum Temperature Trends in the Himalaya and Its Vicinity: An Analysis Based on Temperature Records from Nepal for the Period 1971–94. Journal of Climate, 9/1/99, Vol. 12 Issue 9 pp:2775-2786.
3. The references for the Sri Lankan Temperatures are not from peer reviewed journals, they relate to precipitation, not temperature-see FOD Expert Review Comments .
4. The figure quoted for the Himalaya is the winter trend, not the annual trend. The annual trend is 0.057 º C.yr-1.
5. The highest annual trend for Nepal cited in Shrestha et al., 1999 is 0.09º C.yr-1 for the Trans-Himalaya.
5. The basis of the Himalayan trends (Shrestha et al 1999) is just 6 weather stations,. The average trend of 5 of these stations dating back to the 1960s is (Max/Min) 0.013º C.yr-1, much less than the 0.057º C.yr-1. All five of these stations are located in the eastern Himalaya. There are problems with use of Kriging method to obtain regional trends.
6. The trend cited for Sri Lankan is incorrect and was brought up in the review of IPCC AR4 WGII but not corrected.

Roger Knights says:
August 8, 2010 at 6:26 am
3. Himalayan glaciers (like many other glaciers alarmists cite) have been retreating since long before 1950, which tends to largely exculpate manmade CO2.
***
I thought CO2 emissions began in earnest about 200 years ago. What’s 1950 based on?

“Wrong. They depend, first, on spring and summer meltwater from the *snowfall* on the mountain slopes, second, on the seasonal monsoons, and only finally on glacier melt. And the problem isn’t that the glaciers are melting, it’s that annual snowfall has been reduced — the glaciers are ablating, even in the wintertime. The snowfall has been reduced because the forested area at the base of the mountains has been reduced by logging, fuel gathering, and land-clearing for agriculture.

Trees exhale water vapor, among other things, and if they’re around the base of a mountain range, the vapor is carried upslope until it condenses and falls as snow (it’s *cold* up there). Wet snow falls in the lower elevations, but the lighter powder is carried higher — if there’s less overall evaporation, there’s less overall snowfall, and the decrease is most-noticeable at higher elevations. The high glaciers in the Himalayas can only keep their mass by receiving regular snowfall — which at that altitude, is light powder — and it takes a lot of powder to compact into just an inch of ice.”
***
When a glacier retreats @ 22m/year since 1931 it amounts to about 1.8 Km. That’s a very large store of fresh water gone, melted. In a warming world (sorry, no upset intended) the frost line moves up and the glacier matches by retreating. Mountains are not rectangular colums reaching for the shy, with elevation the area of land upon which the snow falls and glacier habitat decreases. In a stable atmosphere the temperature drops 7C per 1000m elevation. There are two causes for ice/snow melt, temperature above freezing point and direct solar exposure. The winter snow does not really add to the ice thickness by compacting, but by melting from direct sun exposure at the higher altitudes and re-freezing in shady areas. As you said it takes a lot of powder snow to add to glacial mass. Most snow falls near the freezing line and much less at the higher peaks because the colder air is also drier.
Therefore, any glacier gain at high altitude requires an awfull lot of snow, not over decades but thousands of years. The ice on Antarctica did not fall in convenient 1 cubic metre blocks from the sky. It accumulated from snow over hundreds of millions of years. The compacting of ice takes place withing the ice itself from sheer massive weight. Even on Antarctica, a lot of winter snow will melt in summer and refreeze as ice, except for what runs of the ice shelf into the ocean. Given that Antarctica is essentially a dessert in terms of precipitation, the amount fallen on it must amount to hundreds of kilometers cumulative snow depth over hundreds of millions of years. Any ice loss must be seen in the context of how much snowfall was needed to create it in the first place. Ice loss is a worry because there is an enormous time lag between snow fall and ice accumulation.
If monitored glaciers on the Himalayan/Tibettan area are speeding up retreat, it does not make sense to say “Yes but there are 7000 known glaciers, so all the others may not be melting, blimey, they may be increasing, so let’s ignore it until they are all monitored”. Any volunteers? I don’t mind argueing a point, but let’s remain sensible.
No matter how much it is spun into discussions about temperature data being right, wrong or in between. The glaciers don’t care; the proof is in the melting.

I thought CO2 emissions began in earnest about 200 years ago. What’s 1950 based on?

You thought wrong.

It is generally accepted that co2 concentrations prior to 1950 (about 280 ppm) were too low to have any impact whatsoever. The IPCC claims that their models can accurately reproduce the earths temperature prior to 1970 without including co2, and the inclusion of co2 post 1970 is needed for models to match reality. These statements are vital to the IPCC position.

Just to be clear. The ICC claim their climate models accurately reproduce past climate up until 1970 without taking co2 into account. This must mean that co2 concentrations up until 1970 (approx 310 ppm) were having no effect on the climate, and therefore that climate changes prior to 1970 were natural. The IPCC further claim that the climate models accurately reproduce climate since 1970 only by increasing co2 concentrations.

Now ask yourself some tough questions. If climate changes prior to 1970 were natural, what cause the temperature to rise since 1890. What caused glaciers to retreat since 1890. What caused sea-level to rise since 1890. etc. etc. etc.

Your ignorance of the basic facts is outstanding. You are way out of your depth here and it clearly show. Might I suggest you do some reading on the topic first.

There are two causes for ice/snow melt, temperature above freezing point and direct solar exposure.

Just 2 causes? Really?

PS: It matters VERY much who we listen to, and read, and believe, and vote for. It matters more than most of us can, or will, ever imagine.

I sure hope you are either too young, or too lazy to vote. Last thing we need is another ill informed global gladiator like you voting green.

The winter snow does not really add to the ice thickness by compacting, but by melting from direct sun exposure at the higher altitudes and re-freezing in shady areas.

The winter snow, and the year round snow, does add to ice thickness by compacting. Can you please point out where the “shaddy” bits are at the poles?

Just realised you have also contradicted yourself only a few sentences later.

It accumulated from snow over hundreds of millions of years. The compacting of ice takes place withing the ice itself from sheer massive weight.

If the snow has been there for hundreds of millions of years, why didn’t it melt during past interglacial periods when average temperature were much much higher than they are now and much higher than even the worst IPCC forecasts for 2100.

In 2007, Antarctic sea ice had reached its greatest ever recorded extent. Antarctica is normally below zero all year. Winter: -40 to -94°F (-40 to -70°C)
Summer: -5 to -31°F (-15 to -35°C)

Bit hard to melt ice when the temperature is below zero.

No matter how much it is spun into discussions about temperature data being right, wrong or in between. The glaciers don’t care; the proof is in the melting.

Then why have they been melting since 1890? Like you said. The glaciers don’t care.

To continue what
justcherrypicked (said) @ August 8, 2010 at 7:50 pm to Fuzzylogic19,

Several other (minor) facts make Fuzzy’s logic even weaker 8<)

1) The CAGW theory cannot explain the AMO/PDO-linked 66 year 1/4 of one degree sinusoid climate temperature cycle seen in all temperature records worldwide since thermometers where invented. CO2 CAGW theory requires a near-continuous constant increase in temperature with increasing CO2 levels – which has NOT been found anywhere.

2) CAGW-CO2 theory cannot explain the Medieval Warming Period (when temperatures were warmer than today by 1 degree, the Little Ice Age, nor the earlier dark ages and Greco-Roman Warming Periods. So Mann-made global warming papers and theories must remove them from the record; must remove them from the textbooks and computer programs and propaganda we face.

3) CAGW-CO2 theories cannot explain the decrease in temperature between 1940 and 1970, and so must "invent" a global heat reflection change due to unnamed – and never measured! – aerosols somehow effective worldwide, but coming strictly from limited areas in the northeastern US and (central) western Europe. (If anybody else worldwide between 1945 and 1970 was emitting such level of aerosols, please show the industrial output records for those nations ….) Today? Nobody can produce mythical aerosol screens that are cooling the world (because CO2 is needed to create the CAGW-fears), but UNRESTRICTED wide-area solids pollution from China and India is greater than what came from the US in its most-polluting days.

Instead, forced amounts of aerosols and solid pollution is used (er, assumed) to "calibrate" GCM programs to CO2 levels and recorded temperatures in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, then such models are allowed to run with "clear skies" in the 80-90-2000's and are projected into the 2100 and 2200 year points. Yet actual temperature records are manipulated with local UHI heat-affect areas to create the "data" that the computer models are calibrated against!

… All for the 1.3 trillion in taxes and global energy control they need.

I don’t want you to think you are not welcome here. You have as much right to comment as the rest of us, although you might do some reading first.

You can search for information in many locations. If you have already decided the earth is doomed, then the IPCC, Real Climate, Deltoid and Deep Climate will help with your alarmist arguments. Don’t waste your time with wikipedia – it’s just plain crap. I won’t point you to any so called skeptical sites because you can find them on your own.

You are entitled to have an opinion – informed or otherwise. Try, if you can, not to look at this as an alarmists v skeptics battle. It’s far more nuanced than that.

That’s close enough to the *standard* adiabatic lapse rate, but the actual adiabatic lapse rate depends on humidity — in dry air, it’s 3°C per thousand feet, and in moist air, it varies between 1.1°C and 2.8°C. Even in a warming world, you can’t predict a constant, climbing level of condensation in orographic areas because of the mechanical turbulence associated with the terrain — the air is wildly unstable.

The winter snow does not really add to the ice thickness by compacting, but by melting from direct sun exposure at the higher altitudes and re-freezing in shady areas.

Show me the shade on the Greenland ice cap. Show me the shade in Antarctica.

As you said it takes a lot of powder snow to add to glacial mass. Most snow falls near the freezing line and much less at the higher peaks because the colder air is also drier. Therefore, any glacier gain at high altitude requires an awfull lot of snow, not over decades but thousands of years.

You’re obviously unfamiliar with just how much snow *can* fall at higher elevations, and not just in the wintertime. I know where there’s A Pakistani army Llama helicopter buried under a meter of snow at the 6,000 meter contour line in the Hindu Kush — it landed there in 2007.

The ice on Antarctica did not fall in convenient 1 cubic metre blocks from the sky. It accumulated from snow over hundreds of millions of years.

And you’re forgetting (or never knew) that the paleo folks have found some very nice dinosaur fossils there, including plesiosaurs — which automatically makes the ice cap much younger than 65 million years old.

The compacting of ice takes place withing the ice itself from sheer massive weight.

Congratulations. In contradicting yourself, you got it right.

Given that Antarctica is essentially a dessert in terms of precipitation, the amount fallen on it must amount to hundreds of kilometers cumulative snow depth over hundreds of millions of years.

Annual snowfall in Antarctica varies between 20 and 50cm per year, which would easily give you about 400km of snowfall in 900,000 years.

The glaciers don’t care; the proof is in the melting.

So, that means you will also accept glacial advances as proof that the temperature is *not* increasing catastrophically, right?

“Your ignorance of the basic facts is outstanding. You are way out of your depth here and it clearly show. Might I suggest you do some reading on the topic first.”
***
May I bounce this one back?
***

“There are two causes for ice/snow melt, temperature above freezing point and direct solar exposure.
Just 2 causes? Really?”
***
Cite the others, that do not involve a temperature above 0C and if water (self explanatory) but let it be free of salt.
***
“The winter snow, and the year round snow, does add to ice thickness by compacting. Can you please point out where the “shaddy” bits are at the poles?”
***
Unless Antarctica is perfectly flat, the topography and low sun angle will do it. Ever looked at a snow field near you and seen the snow melt on the sun exposed side of any ridge? Need not be high either. Ever seen icicles melt on the sun exposed side of a house, yet form on the shady side?
***
“Just realised you have also contradicted yourself only a few sentences later.
It accumulated from snow over hundreds of millions of years. The compacting of ice takes place withing the ice itself from sheer massive weight.”
***
The lowest ice bearing the weight of a kilometre of ice or more above it, will compact and become fluid like lava. Snow will settle over time but has inherently low weight by volume when deposited. There are no great forces other than another layer of snow do do some compacting, if that’s what you would call it, I prefer settling.
Where’s the contradiction?
***
“If the snow has been there for hundreds of millions of years, why didn’t it melt during past interglacial periods when average temperature were much much higher than they are now and much higher than even the worst IPCC forecasts for 2100.”
***
Where did I say that snow has been there for hundreds of millions of years? I said that it took hundreds of millions of years of snowfalls to create the ice cap. As for temperature, how much higher? We are at the end of the present Holocene (about 13,000 years) and (disregarding the last 200 years) the heat balance was such that the Antarctic ice cap did not melt. How warm was the previous interglacial and if warmer, would it have melted arctic and Antarctic ice? How warm was the one before? How far do you want to go back? Ice core data goes back at least 5 interglacials, meaning that the ice did not melt, so how much warmer was it? If you can give me a difinitive answer, please oblige.
***
“In 2007, Antarctic sea ice had reached its greatest ever recorded extent. Antarctica is normally below zero all year. Winter: -40 to -94°F (-40 to -70°C)
Summer: -5 to -31°F (-15 to -35°C)
Bit hard to melt ice when the temperature is below zero.”
***
The landfast ice sheets melt from below. Grace satelite measurements show ice volume loss.
***
“Then why have they been melting since 1890? Like you said. The glaciers don’t care.”
***
So you agree that they are melting.

“I don’t want you to think you are not welcome here. You have as much right to comment as the rest of us, although you might do some reading first.”
***
Thank you, but for reading, I have about 300 books covering both sides of the argument and now a choked hard drive as well. Patronising based on assumption is risky.
***
“You can search for information in many locations. If you have already decided the earth is doomed, then the IPCC, Real Climate, Deltoid and Deep Climate will help with your alarmist arguments. Don’t waste your time with wikipedia – it’s just plain crap. I won’t point you to any so called skeptical sites because you can find them on your own.”
***
I don’t find the language used very helpful. If I believe that global warming is real, why am I immediately called an ‘alarmist’, ‘thermo-maniac’ etc while respectfully referring to the other side as sceptics. Not that I get the impression that every one commenting here is a genuine sceptic by definition. Too many attack science irrationally or refer to conspiracies. Why do you call Wikipedia crap, is that fair? Surely there’s a lot of good stuff there. If it is just a personal gripe, isn’t it better kept to yourself?

“At the same time that we were emerging from the little ice age, the industrial era began, and this was accompanied by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. CO2 is the most prominent of these, and it is again generally accepted that it has increased by about 30%. ”

“The defining characteristic of a greenhouse gas is that it is relatively transparent to visible light from the sun but can absorb portions of thermal radiation. In general, the earth balances the incoming solar radiation by emitting thermal radiation, and the presence of greenhouse substances inhibits cooling by thermal radiation and leads to some warming. “

“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”

I’m curious. What evidence do you have for this statement? Because if it’s true, global warming hardly seems important.

BTW. The Holocene is the name for the current geological epoch which began 10-12,000 years ago. Holocene is not a term meaning interglacial as you imply by calling it the “present Holocene”. You must’ve been sleepy when you reading about that.

I’m curious about your claim of owning 300 climate books. I didn’t know so many had been written. I would be most interested if you would kindly list them.

Fuzzylogic19: August 9, 2010 at 1:12 amWhere did I say that snow has been there for hundreds of millions of years? I said that it took hundreds of millions of years of snowfalls to create the ice cap.

Taking “hundreds of millions of years of snowfall” to make an ice cap is a pretty neat trick, considering Antarctica wasn’t even cool enough for snow to fall until about *fourteen* million years ago, and beech trees evidently flourished there until only two million years ago.

Fuzzylogic19,
“I thought CO2 emissions began in earnest about 200 years ago. What’s 1950 based on?”

You thought wrong.

It is generally accepted that co2 concentrations prior to 1950 (about 280 ppm) were too low to have any impact whatsoever. The IPCC claims that their models can accurately reproduce the earths temperature prior to 1970 without including co2, and the inclusion of co2 post 1970 is needed for models to match reality. These statements are vital to the IPCC position.
***
We began to measure CO2 emissions in 1958 at Mauna Loa at 280ppm. From 1000 to 1770 AD the CO2 level was stable at 278ppm, slightlt dropping to 271ppm by about 1800. Between 1800 and 1900 it rose to 290ppm and then to 394ppm today. There is no identfyable impact figure. The initial slow rise would have had a proportional slow response but already acellerated from 1800 onward to 315ppm in 1958.(http://www.co2now.org/) From the moment CO2 levels rise there will be a proportional impact, subject to lag times. The no impact whatsoever statement doesn’t make sense, unless it is qualified with ‘observable’ on a time line.

You better get the IPCC on the phone quick pronto. This is riveting stuff. You might save the world yet.

Do you make a habit of contradicting yourself generally, or only on this blog? Why is it you state co2 in 1958 being 280 ppm, then later claim it was 315 ppm in the same year.

You, and your alarmist buddies, are having a fit over 0.7 c increase. Which is so mind numbingly insignificant that it is meaningless. 0.7 c is unmeasureable.

I live in Melbourne, Australia. Right now, @12:19AM the temp at the Melbourne observatory in 8.2c, at Melbourne Airport it is 3.4c, and at Essendon Airport (mid way between the first 2) it’s 4.3c. Within an arc which radius is from Melbourne to Melbourne Airport the temperature varies significantly. Laverton Airport 2.5 c, Moorabbin Airport 5.4c, Coldstream 1.2c, and Bundoora 10.0. Not a bad variation, is it.

Where and how temperature is measured makes all the difference. Don’t get hung up on this bull$hit idea about an average temperature for the planet. It doesn’t exist.

Fuzzylogic19: August 9, 2010 at 6:49 amFrom 1000 to 1770 AD the CO2 level was stable at 278ppm, slightlt dropping to 271ppm by about 1800.

Nope. CO2 was never “stable at 278ppm” for that long. From the Law Dome ice core report:

“Preindustrial CO2 mixing ratios [measured from 1006AD] were in the range 275-284 ppm, with the lower levels during 1550-1800 A.D., probably as a result of colder global climate (Etheridge et al. 1996). The Law Dome ice core CO2 records show major growth in atmospheric CO2 levels over the industrial period, except during 1935-1945 A.D. when levels stabilized or decreased slightly.”

It mentions 119 temperature records from Nepal. They are provided by the DHM. The 15 above 1800m show warming of 1°C/decade. Those below show 0.6°C/decade. Given the relative size of the areas covered the 0.9°C from the IPCC report may be robust.

While DHM provided the project with data from the entire national hydrometeorological
network of Nepal, it proved more difficult to obtain data for India and
Pakistan. The DHM data set includes daily flow data for 44 river gauging stations for
the period 1964-2000, 258 daily precipitation records covering 1956-1996, 119 daily
and monthly temperature records spanning the period 1934-1996, 114 records of
average monthly humidity from 1967-1997, and 41 records with average monthly
values of sunshine hours between 1967-1997.

DHM = His Majesty’s Government of Nepal Department for Hydrology and Meteorology

Turboblocke – please note that
also says that ‘Calculating the averge annual temperature of the 119 temperature guages in Nepal located at elevations on between 72 m and 4100 m avove sea level, reveals an upward trend in values from 1961 to 1996 at a rate of almost 7C per 100 years’ !!!